Speech analytics can provide a valuable service for customer service departments -- it's not just enough to know that a customer is happy or upset, satisfied or dissatisfied. Analytics can take these conversations can determine exactly why a customers reacted the way they did, or exactly what pleased them or what ticked them off. There have been questions as to just how scalable speech analytics solutions can be, in order to reach larger enterprises. However, CallMiner is looking to change that with its sixth-generation speech analytics solution, CallMiner Eureka.

According to Jeff Gallino, CallMiner's cofounder and chief technology officer, the latest Eureka release has a primary focus on delivering results for large-scale implementations for enterprises. "Basically, this release of Eureka is about proven scalability, independence both technical and vendor, and through that creating kind of a future proof analytics layer," he says. Noting the company's two recent customer announcements, Daimler Financial Services Americas and Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, Gallino is confident the latest version of Eureka will analyze, synthesize, and deliver. "This isn't a future release of a product," he says. "This is a product we've installed and been running with these customers this year, and we're just now telling the rest of the world about it."

Eureka is now split into two separate layers, a platform layer and a presentation layer. Gallino notes the presentation layer has been split into a large scale Web report and search delivery system, and a heavy client analyst workbench. New platform enhancements include:

Full functional multi-tenancy for data separation across business units or clients.

Of these platform enhancements, Gallino notes the third, supporting full functional multitenancy is a strong competitive differentiator. While executives may want to have one single analytics layer to get a comprehensive view, different lines of business may want their own layer. Multitenancy can give the best of both worlds. "With multitenancy, people do not have to constantly switch between systems to look at different results," he says. "[This feature] is not very common in the contact center space."

Beyond the platform, new user-facing features in the latest version of Eureka include:

Of these, enabling users to customize call categories to analyze and measure stands out most to Gallino. "This is a big differentiator for us," he declares. "With this release, the power to modify, add, and delete from the [categories CallMiner can measure] is now in the customer's hands."

The release and customer announcements underscore a move by CallMiner to reach out beyond small-to-midsize businesses, and establish a footprint with larger enterprises. According to Gareth Herschel, research director at Gartner, proven, large-scale implementations will be necessary to convince customers that speech analytics solutions are both scalable and legitimate for larger enterprises. "In helping customers plot solutions and strategies for CRM, business intelligence, and call center [agent quality management], we're always asked whether we believe speech analytics is real and whether it has scalability," he writes. "To meet the standard of 'enterprise proven', Gartner believes speech analytics solution providers should have large, global implementations with out-of-the-box functionality to support business analysts and the needs of senior executives."